We would like to receive your contribution or suggestions for the next issue of the UA-Magazine:
NO. 13: FROM SEED TO TABLE; DEVELOPING URBAN MARKET CHAINS (JULY 2010)
Deadline for Contributions: July 2010
The Urban Agriculture Magazine
The UA-Magazine facilitates sharing of information on the impacts of urban agriculture, promotes the analysis and debate on critical issues for the development of the sector, and publishes "good" practices in urban agriculture.
The UA-Magazine is produced under the RUAF programme Cities Farming for the Future (CFF), funded by DGIS (the Netherlands) and IDRC (Canada).
The main aim of the RUAF-CFF programme is to contribute to urban poverty reduction, urban food security, improved urban environmental management, empowerment of urban farmers and participatory city governance via capacity development of local stakeholders in urban agriculture and facilitating participatory and multi-stakeholder policy formulation and action planning on urban agriculture, including safe reuse of urban organic wastes and wastewater.
The UA-Magazine is published two times a year on the RUAF-website (www.ruaf.org) and in a hardcopy version. It is available in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, and Portuguese.
The UA-Magazine welcomes contributions on new initiatives at individual, neighbourhood, city and national levels. Attention can be focused on technical socio-economic, institutional or policy aspects of sustainable urban food production, marketing, processing and distribution systems. Although articles on any related issue is welcome, and is considered for publication, each UA-Magazine focuses on a selected theme
(for previous issues visit: www.ruaf.org).
We are currently seeking contributions for the following issue:
Many urban households engage in local production of food, food processing and vending and related activities as their main, or as a complementary livelihood strategy. Urban Agriculture is a noteworthy source of income and savings and is often more profitable than rural-based production. It effectively contributes to reduce food insecurity by improving access to fresh and low priced food and raising the nutritional and health status of poor and middle income households (both of the producing families as well as of other poor families in these areas). Furthermore, the up- and downstream effects of urban agriculture in the local economy can be considerable. It is important to show that urban agriculture is not just an informal, residual, subsistence activity, but it has potential to shift from simple to enlarged production of urban food, when its proximity to urban consumers is optimised and incomes are sustained in the long run.
Several constraints limit the development of value chains for urban agriculture, such as:
-
Low degree of (or inappropriate) support services;
-
Limited access to productive resources and insecure land tenure;
-
Low degree of organisation of urban producers;
-
Low productivity and profitability;
-
Low degree of business planning, marketing skills and information.
Market-, or value chains, concern the production, processing and marketing of products ‘from farm to fork’, linking producers, traders, processors, manufacturers, retailers and consumers. Value chain development is a key concept in strategies to reduce rural (and increasingly also urban) poverty in developing countries. There is an increase in attention to regional and international commodity chain development. We are focusing in this magazine on local value chains; connecting urban and peri-urban producers with urban centres through sustainable food systems. One of the challenges encountered in value chain development is to include the most vulnerable groups.
In this issue of the UA Magazine we will discuss and highlight experiences how urban farmers can develop safe and sustainable production, processing and marketing systems.
The RUAF From Seed to Table programme (FStT) is building upon earlier work of the RUAF partners, enhanced integration of urban agriculture in urban policies and planning and stronger participation of urban farmers and other stakeholders in the planning process, by supporting farmers and their organisations in 17 partner cities to develop safe and sustainable production, processing and marketing systems. Experiences gained so far will be shared in this issue of the UA Magazine, regarding the process of FStT, participatory market analysis, the selection of the Most Promising Options for the selected farmers and their organisation, access to financing and organisational strengthening, and will be illustrated by some cases.
Articles
Articles on urban agriculture should consist of maximum 2000 words (three pages), 1300 words (two pages), or 600 words (one page), preferably accompanied by an abstract, a maximum of 5 references, figures and digital images or photographs of good quality (more than 300 dpi or in jpg format more than 400 kb preferably).The articles should be written in a manner that is readily understood by a wide variety of stakeholders all over the world.
Other information on the subject
We also invite you to submit information on recent publications, journals, videos, photographs, cartoons, letters, technology descriptions and assessments, workshops, training courses, conferences, networks, web-links, etc., especially those relating to this theme.
Issues of the UA-Magazine in 2010
The following issues will be produced in 2010 and your ideas and contributions of articles are already most welcome:
No. 11: Building Resilient Cities
No. 12: Urban Nutrient Management
